Quotes By Steve Lacy

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.

People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.

I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.

I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.

Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.

The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.

You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.

The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.

If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration.

The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.